Rachel Thomas, PhD

As a former mathematician, I was used to nobody reading what I wrote.

Most people catch many viruses in their lives– for example, over 90% of adults have Epstein-Barr virus, and adults catch the flu about once every 5 years.

I recently gave a talk tying together many of the topics I care about most: the potential of AI in immunology, racial and gender bias in medicine, harms of AI in society, the systemic dismissal of patient experience by doctors, and the promise of particip…

Deep learning is glamorous and highly rewarded.

DNA sequencing hasn’t lived up to the hype Twenty to thirty years ago, politicians, scientific leaders, journalists, and even Nobel laureates predicted that sequencing the human genome would revolutionize how we treat disease.

Amidst the barrage of executive orders and announcements Trump made during his first week in office are two which highlight common misunderstandings and obfuscations about the relationship between data, AI, and power.

The lavender images below show breast tissue.

I spent close to 20 years focused on mathematics and data science, including cofounding the research lab fast.ai, which focused on the powerful family of AI algorithms known as deep learning.

“The human immune system is amazing, with an impressive range of techniques to protect against invaders.”

My daughter is constantly creating– her passions include making art, writing fiction, coding interactive games, and composing music.

AI is being used to tackle high-impact scientific problems, including searching for new antibiotics to combat antibiotic-resistance and predicting what foreign substances the immune system can recognize as invaders.

That which doesn’t kill you… Some people compare the immune system to a muscle, suggesting that the more you use it, the stronger it gets.

This post is part 3 in a series on using AI to predict T cell binding.

This post can stand alone as a friendly introduction to neural nets, no background required.

I’m studying the intersection of AI and immunology, two notoriously jargon-heavy fields – but it’s important that scientists share their work with a broader audience.

This is part 2 in a series covering surprising facts about the microbiome.

This is part 1 in a series.

A Growing Threat The WHO estimates that antimicrobial resistance (AMR) contributed to approximately 5 million deaths worldwide in 2019 (“Antimicrobial Resistance” 2023).

AI has made remarkable strides in the medical field, with capabilities including the detection of Parkinson’s disease via retinal images, identification of promising drug candidates, and prediction of hospital readmissions.

This post is part 2 in a series.